Life Is Life

Feb 22, 2022 — Acting, that undefinable amalgam of technique, persona, and plain hard work, dominates this month’s roundup.

Feb 14, 2022 — The Berlinale’s most adventurous section offers adaptations, inspiration, and a slice of its own history.

Dec 13, 2021 — When Jessica Beshir embarked on making her debut feature more than a decade ago, she realized she was going to have to get comfortable with the unfamiliar and unknown. Not only did the Mexico-born, Brooklyn-based filmmaker have to learn how...

Oct 20, 2021 — The range this month stretches from the silent era to this weekend’s launch of The Liberated Film Club.

Sep 21, 2021 — Johnnie To pays homage to Akira Kurosawa in this martial arts drama about the virtue of struggle and self-improvement.

Aug 24, 2021 — Andrzej Wajda’s masterful portrait of postwar Poland pits Communist ideals against the bitter realities of a new order.

May 11, 2021 — Dorothy Arzner’s deeply cynical portrait of marriage exemplifies the director’s ambivalence toward the norms dictating female behavior, wielding ironic detachment to mask one woman’s simmering inner turmoil.

Apr 9, 2021 — A round on the origins of works by Isabel Sandoval, Sky Hopinka, Steve McQueen, Pasolini, and Rivette.

Mar 8, 2021 — “I see the beauty now,” my mother told me when I asked her what she thought of Cicely Tyson’s face, about a week after the pathbreaking actor died in January at ninety-six. “But I didn’t then.” By “then,” she meant...

Feb 11, 2021 — The body never lies.Instead, it keeps score, with our very gestures and walk and physical eccentricities speaking to the traumas and desires we’d like to keep hidden. But there are some people so aware of this truth, and the power...